While Flosum features a multitude of tools that simplify the lives of release managers and developers, some of its most impactful features include its Back Promotion and Org Synchronization capabilities.
Back promotion has historically been a part of many DevOps processes. Back promotion allows users to promote code from higher environments to lower environments after deploying code to a higher environment. This keeps all orgs in sync, so that teams can save time and do not need to rely on sandbox refreshes.
Flosum has many tools that alert a user when there are differences between orgs, snapshots, and repositories, so that the user can take action, merge code, and back promote to keep those all in sync. Unlike other DevOps tools, these tools use semantic comparison, not line-by-line comparison. This method will catch only the true differences between the code, without falsely flagging similar code as a "difference" because it is simply the same code placed in different lines.
The Flexibility of Flosum
Flosum was built on the concept that promoting code with a process that includes multiple user stories or developers at one time can be simple as long as the tool is flexible. Because of this, back promotion within Flosum is flexible as well. Users are able to select the exact components of a branch or org they want back promoted, instead of only being given the ability to back promote an entire branch (like many other DevOps tools in the market). Flosum effectively allows users to back promote almost anything - A user story, an org, a branch, or even a repository using Flosum's snapshot feature.
Other DevOps tools lack this flexibility, and back promoting an entire branch can often result in code overwrites and be extremely time consuming for the developer or release manager. This can be detrimental to a team's efficiency and result in missed deadlines, longer hours and a general barrier to productivity.
When a user decides to back promote within Flosum, there are safeguards to make sure that the code being back promoted will not overwrite the code in the target org or branch. These safeguard tools automatically alert the user of potential overwrites, allowing them to solve those errors on the fly before completing the back promotion.
In Flosum, users even have the ability to automate their back promotion if they choose to include this in their automation process. This flexibility within Flosum's back promotion capabilities remains unparalleled by other platforms.
If a user would like visibility into the state of each branch, or which orgs are in or out of sync with that branch, they can easily visualize this within a Branch State Diagram. This diagram also gives users a complete overview of the branch, tracking progress and errors at each stage of activity between the source and target orgs. This is another great, visual way for users to recognize when back promotion may be helpful.
Flosum's org synchronization features are widely used by customers, and consistently promote better, quicker, and more efficient processes for our users. With so many tools related to back promotion at the user's disposal, keeping orgs in sync is extremely flexible and precise.
